Читать книгу American Vampire - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 9

Waking to the disturbing sensation of not knowing where he was or why he was there, Graf sat up on the rickety cot. Someone was coming toward him, but his vision hadn’t cleared enough for him to make out who. He did know that he was naked, and he didn’t want that kind of vulnerability. He put a hand out to reach for his jeans and started to stand.

Someone yelled, “Whoa!” and someone else yelled, “Don’t get up!”

He rubbed his eyes. His skin was on fire, and he felt like he hadn’t slept at all. He was thirsty, parched, in fact. He needed to eat somebody. “What time is it?”

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in Jessa’s basement?”

Graf cracked one eye, but the brightness of the basement made it difficult to focus. “Could you cover that window over there?” He hadn’t seen sunlight in thirty years—at least, not willingly.

“Hungover?” the male voice asked, kicking the leg of the cot, and Graf put his arms out to keep from tipping over.

“Jesus, Derek, we’re not interrogating a suspect! He’s allergic to the sun. Put that gun away!” The woman from last night—Jessa, apparently—scrabbled through the boxes and camp gear in the corner and eventually found something to block the light from the dirty, ground-level window. A deflated pool raft stuffed into the hole covered the glass, filtering the light through thick blue vinyl.

The male voice spoke again. “Allergic to the sun? That sounds like something a vampire would say in a vampire movie.”

Very astute. His vision clearing, Graf examined the guy, who certainly did not look like the astute type. Derek, Jessa had called him. A lot of new, human names to remember that he didn’t care to remember. Derek had a college emblem on the hat he wore and a T-shirt with a varsity football logo on it that screamed, I didn’t willingly leave my high school days behind. He looked strong. Small-town strong. Farm-chores strong. Not strong enough to take Graf in a fight. He might not win, but he’d sure put up one, and the last thing Graf wanted was any kind of hard work. Derek slipped a handgun into the back of his jeans. That was another thing Graf didn’t want to deal with.

Jessa stood beside him, not close enough to tell Graf that they were lovers, but close enough that it was apparent they once had been.

“What’s his name?” Derek asked, and Graf let the woman falter for a little bit before he looked up.

“His name is Graf. He was trying to sleep after he was attacked by a monster last night.” Graf rubbed his eyes again. “What is it, 8:00 a.m.?”

“It’s one in the afternoon,” Jessa snapped. “And you weren’t the only one running from a monster last night.”

“I was the only one saving you. I guess I thought that would be good enough reason to let me sleep in!” He thought about standing up and choking her, but then he would be the only naked person in the room, and he tried to avoid that whenever possible.

“Okay, both of you, shut up.” Derek gave Graf what was supposed to be a threatening look, but really just made him look like an angry gorilla.

“Now, listen, Graf.” He leaned on the name like it was an accusation. “I don’t know where you came from—”

“Detroit.” Graf pushed his fingers through his hair. “You can stop your tough-guy act. I’m not going to cause any trouble.” That you’ll be able to do anything about.

“You’re in my girl’s house. You scared the shit out of her, and you pissed me off. You’ve already ‘caused any trouble.'” Derek gave the distinct impression that if Graf had been wearing a shirt, he would be yanking him up by the front of it. It was a good thing he’d turned down Sophia’s offer to pierce his nipples.

Graf filed the “my girl” remark in the back of his mind, for later use. If Sophia had taught him anything, it was that the most effective injury to inflict was to an opponent’s pride. Maybe he would sleep with Jessa, after all.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and let his hands hang between his bare legs. “This isn’t just an inconvenience for you guys. I don’t want to be stuck in some podunk town forever. If I could redo last night, I wouldn’t have gotten all turned around in Cleveland. I damn sure wouldn’t have stopped here.”

“Well, you’re not here forever. You’re just here until you die.” Derek cracked his knuckles, probably imitating some mobster he’d seen in a movie. “You get my draft?”

“It’s drift, you moron.” Graf lay back down on the cot. At sundown, if Corn-fed was still hanging around with his stupid tough-guy act, Graf was going to drain him dry. At the very least, he would be doing Jessa a favor. If this was the kind of guy she really went for, it would probably be doing her a favor to kill her, too.

“What did you just call me?” Derek demanded, his voice dripping with unspent testosterone.

Graf didn’t bother to open his eyes. “I’m too tired to repeat it. Come back later.”

From the sound of Jessa’s feet shuffling on the dirt floor and the rapid-fire, “No, no, no!” she uttered, Graf knew Derek had lunged for him, and that most likely Jessa had held him back. Though it took considerable effort not to sit up and rip out the guy’s windpipe right then and there, Graf restrained himself. It would be better if he waited, until the sun went down and he had a place to hide the bodies.

“That son of a bitch has a big problem on his hands now, a big problem.” Derek swore, his voice accompanied by the creaking of the stairs.

When the door slammed, Graf sat up and pulled on his jeans. He cocked his head to listen to the muffled conversation upstairs.

“You can’t just go around punching people!” Jessa had a different angry voice with Derek than she’d had with Graf the night before. There was more frustration invested in it. That was interesting.

“There’s something weird about that guy, and I don’t like it!”

“It doesn’t matter if you like it! It’s not like he can leave!” There was a strained silence, and Graf imagined the two humans staring at each other, daring each other to try for the last word.

“And … go,” Graf prompted quietly.

On the heels of his words, Jessa spoke. “Look, I’ll take him over to June’s Place tonight, see if I can’t get someone else to put him up.”

Derek huffed in reply. “Yeah, well, you better take him over to Tom Stoke’s place, too. He’s going to want to know what’s happening, and you don’t want to get Tom pissed off. I might go over there, too, and let him know I’m not real keen on the notion of some guy staying out here with you, alone.”

“Oh, yeah, and what’s Tom going to do? Make me wear a big, red letter A on my chest?” She lowered her voice. “Besides, this guy isn’t dangerous. He’s just a prick.”

Graf couldn’t help but smile at that. They were so trusting sometimes. His smile died when she followed up her statement with, “He seems kind of like the whiny type. Not real intimidating.”

“Don’t make me worry about you,” Derek warned, and the implication went beyond fearing for her safety. And … confirmation. Graf had figured there was something going on between the two of them. So, he was a jealous boyfriend? Where the hell had he been when his girl was running from—and being rescued by—monsters?

When Jessa spoke again, her tone was hard and cold. “You should be getting back on home to your wife, shouldn’t you?”

That was interesting. Very interesting. Better than the soap operas Sophia had forced him to watch with her.

Derek swore, and the floorboards overhead creaked as he stomped across them. The outside door slammed.

Graf expected to hear Jessa crying—the spurned lover, the other woman, reduced to tears by the man she couldn’t give up. Instead, all he heard was an exasperated sigh, then footsteps through the kitchen.

If it hadn’t been so damned sunny out, he would have gone upstairs and shown her exactly how non-intimidating he was. Knowing the way the place was decorated, there were probably yellowing lace curtains on the windows and he’d be incinerated instantly. And a sick part of him still wondered if he’d kill her or have sex with her. If she was getting it from that Derek guy, it probably wasn’t that good. He could do things to her that would make her forget she ever gave a shit about Country Boy.

Thoughts like that made his fangs ache, and other things, too. Hunger, even the sexual variety, was too exhausting to deal with at the moment, so he lay down and went back to sleep.

“Wake up. Allergic to the sun does not mean ‘lazy as hell.’ I saw those girls on 20/20.”

Graf peeled open one eye. Jessa stood over him, scowling. Be patient, he urged himself. You can’t eat her yet. You don’t know how to find anyone else to eat without her help.

The way he figured it, he could follow her to this Tom guy’s house, and then to June’s Place, whatever that was. He could get acquainted with the town tonight and then finish off Jessa and her backwoods Casanova before polishing off the rest of the hillbillies as necessary.

He stood up and reached for his shirt. When he pulled it on, she turned away quickly, a guilty expression on her face. She’d been sneaking a peek, and the hungry look in her eyes told him her opinion of what she’d seen. Very interesting, considering Everybody’s All-American hadn’t been all that bad-looking.

“So, what, do you spend, like, forty hours a week at the gym?” she snorted, starting for the stairs.

“No, I don’t work out all that much.” It was true. There was really no point in a vampire working out. For the most part, he looked exactly the same as he had the day he’d been turned. Sure, his muscles had become more toned from the boost in strength, and his wardrobe was a lot different, and he didn’t have a lame haircut anymore, but physically, not much could be changed about the way a vampire looked. A lesson Sophia had learned when she’d stupidly tried to get collagen injections in her lips. At least the plastic surgeon had been delicious.

Jessa made a noise that told him she didn’t believe him. “Meet me in the kitchen. We’ve got eggs and apples for dinner.”

“I’m not really all that hungry,” he called after her as she jogged up the stairs. He followed, his stomach jerking in response to the smell of the food. Another physical thing that couldn’t be changed. “Eggs and apples?”

“All I can afford.” She shrugged as she scraped scrambled eggs from a large, cast-iron skillet. “We have to make do with what we’ve got.”

He rolled his eyes. “I appreciate that fact. You can stop acting like a dust-bowl farmer.”

The skillet clattered to the stove top, and she braced her hands against the counter. “You have got some nerve, buddy.”

“I have some nerve? You get me trapped here, you let your boyfriend come down to beat my ass—”

“Derek is not my boyfriend!” she shouted as she whirled toward him, the spatula in her hand whipping flecks of egg through the air. Her shocked gaze followed their trajectory.

Graf ducked the flying food and gave a low whistle. “You don’t say?”

“I don’t even know why I’m explaining it to you. It’s none of your business.” She took a deep breath. “What were you doing at the service station? You shouldn’t have been able to stop there in the first place. But couldn’t you tell it wasn’t open, from the fact that it was all dark inside?”

Before he could stop himself, his gaze flicked guiltily to the countertop in front of him, and he knew he was caught. Usually, he could lie convincingly enough to fool a polygraph machine, but for some reason that skill had failed him now, and in front of a woman who was, he had to admit, a pretty smart cookie.

“Oh my God!” She put her hands on her hips. “You were going to rob it!”

“I was not!” The quick denial sealed his fate. He should have laughed it off, like it was the most ridiculous suggestion in the world. “Well, I was going to steal a map—”

“Ha! I knew it!” She pointed at him, like an actor in a courtroom drama who was really enjoying her role. “You were going to rob the place. What are you, some kind of criminal? I should have known you couldn’t afford that car.”

“That car was a gift,” he sputtered, then, realizing that he was defending himself to a woman he planned on making a meal of, stopped himself. “Look, what does it matter? I was there, and I saved your life.”

“And you’re probably going to steal my silverware when my back is turned.” She shook her head, glaring off at seemingly nothing, as though accusing the air of ruining her evening. “This is just great.”

“Yeah, I’m having a hell of a time, myself.”

Her eyes narrowed as she glared back to him.

“You’re out of here tonight. We’ll go down to June’s Place and foist you off on someone else.”

“Foist?” He chuckled. “That’s a pretty big word for a farm girl.”

Ignoring the barb, she dropped a plate in front of him. As she sauntered out of the kitchen, she snapped, “Eat up.”

“Oh, believe me, I will,” he said under his breath, and reluctantly lifted his fork.

They set out right after sunset. Jessa’s understanding of sunlight was that when the sun went down, there was no sunlight. It was a simplistic belief, but he couldn’t really expect much else from someone who was basically a Hee Haw personality. The residual light prickled his skin, but didn’t burn him. It did bring back the unpleasant memories of being nearly roasted alive in the trunk of his car, which he didn’t appreciate.

Before he killed her, he’d have to ask her where he could find a map to get back to the highway, so he wouldn’t get stuck in a similar situation once he got out of here. Who knew how many void towns there were in Ohio?

“You need to behave yourself,” Jessa scolded. He hadn’t even done anything yet. “Tom Stoke is the sheriff here. He doesn’t take lip from anybody, not even guys with fancy cars. And he has a way of dealing with people who don’t fall in line.”

“Tar and feathers?” Graf guessed, but Jessa didn’t smile. She pressed her lips together into an unattractive line and kept walking, head down.

Maybe this Tom person thought he was a tough guy, but most tough guys crumbled like dust when a vampire started sticking their teeth in them. Not dust … more like rag dolls.

“People in town don’t like different,” she warned ominously. “Bad things can happen.”

He would worry about bad things later. Right now, he needed to figure out a way to get out of town. He would think about bad things and this place when he was driving far, far away from it.

Tom Stoke’s house wasn’t a house so much as it was a single-wide trailer parked on a depressing lot surrounded by tall grass. Just after the grass a rotting wooden bridge spanned the gap over a ditch that ran through his driveway, giving the place the appearance of having a moat. It was like the worst castle in the history of all castles.

“Sheriff?” Jessa called, picking her way across the collapsing bridge. “It’s Jessa Gallagher. I’m coming to your door.”

Graf noticed the hand-painted, misspelled TRES-PASERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE sign as he crossed the bridge behind her. The front door of the trailer swung open, and a dumpy man—who looked to be about sixty in Graf’s estimation—came out to stand on the cinder-block steps. He held a rifle at his side. Totally normal way to answer a door.

“Who’s that with you? Derek?”

“No. This is what I came here to talk to you about,” Jessa shouted back, indicating Graf with a jerk of her thumb. “Sorry to come out so late, but I can explain.”

They crossed the yard, mostly hard dirt with a few pathetic yellow clumps of grass, and Graf ducked into the shade beside the trailer. In the twilight, nearly everything was shade, but this was a cool patch that had been sunless for hours, far more comfortable than the residual heat that lingered everywhere else.

The sheriff looked Graf up and down, stroking his beard with two fingers. “I’ll be damned,” he said, beady gray eyes squinting even further in his wrinkled face. He looked like Santa Claus’s brother who’d done some time in jail for DUI. Multiple DUIs.

Jessa pushed some stray, sweat-dampened hair from her face. “I found him on the road last night, out by the service station. He said he stopped for gas, but I’m pretty sure he stopped to rob the place.”

Narc, Graf thought. Maybe she was hoping the sheriff would arrest him right then and there, and take her problem guest off her hands. “It was a good thing I stopped, though, or you would have been dead.”

“That’s true,” Jessa agreed, surprisingly. “I was out there running from It, and if he hadn’t been there … I don’t want to think about what would have happened.” She said the last part the way bad actors deliver lines in Westerns. Not convincing, and you knew that they were mimicking the performance of someone better. Which gave Graf the distinct impression that she would have rather been caught by the monster. Either she was suicidal, or she hated him enough that she would rather be dead than know him. Either way, he had the solution to her problem.

“Doesn’t really matter why he was out there, does it? Not when there ain’t nothing out there to rob.” The sheriff put out his hand. “Tom Stoke. Sheriff. Let’s not worry about what you were doing out there. Let’s talk about how you got into this here town at all.”

He welcomed them inside the trailer. The interior was in a lot better shape than the exterior, though on a purely functional level only. On an aesthetic level, it was the seventh circle of hell. The walls were covered in wood paneling, save the small, open kitchen wallpapered in a print of huge mauve roses with metallic gold leaves. Not that much of the wall coverings were visible between the commemorative Elvis plates and shelves of Precious Moments figurines.

This decorating schema was as close to wholesome as Graf figured he’d ever get, and just standing in the midst of all of it made his skin itch.

“Marjorie, you wanna go to the kitchen? I got official business here,” the sheriff said to a woman about his age dressed in a sweat suit with a picture of two kittens snuggling on the front. She set aside the tattered crossword puzzle book she had been working on and nodded, not in a friendly way, to Jessa as she walked past.

“Sit down, young man,” Tom said, taking up residence in what was probably his regular chair, a wooden rocker with padded seat and arms. “Tell me how you got here.”

Graf took a seat in the armchair Marjorie had vacated, leaving Jessa standing awkwardly by the door. “Well, I got off an exit on 75 hoping to bypass a traffic jam, then I got all turned around. I was running out of gas and needed to get somewhere to sleep, so I pulled over at the gas station. I figured it was closed, but I thought I could sleep there and get gas when it opened in the morning. It was a win-win situation.”

“And that’s where you saw Jessa?” The sheriff glanced suspiciously at her. Maybe she had a record. Stealing street signs or something smalltownish like that.

Either way, the sheriff seemed to believe him more than he would likely believe Jessa. Her antagonistic glare cut right into him, practically carving liar on his forehead.

“Yeah. I saw the beam of a flashlight in the windows, so I went in to investigate. That’s when It attacked us. Mighty nice monster you got out here, Sheriff.” Graf tipped his imaginary cowboy hat, but Stoke didn’t crack a smile.

“I don’t know how much Jessa has told you about this town, but we ain’t had any strangers here in five years.” The sheriff rocked in his chair like a shark circling a wounded seal. “You’ll have to pardon me if I get a little suspicious when I hear your story.”

“That’s fine.” Graf held up his hands. “I’m suspicious, myself. I’m supposed to be meeting friends down in D.C., and they’re going to be worried if I don’t show up soon.”

“D.C.?” Stoke’s eyebrows shot up at that. “You FBI?”

Graf hesitated. “No … I was on my way to a party.”

“He’s not FBI,” Jessa said with certainty. “He’s too dumb to be FBI.”

I’m smart enough to F. U. Up. He didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her remark. “The FBI has probably tried to get in here a million times, you’ve just never noticed. Think about it—all you people suddenly missing, not contacting your loved ones, not paying your bills. Heck, someone in this town has to have a car loan they defaulted on. You’re so far lost, even a skip tracer can’t find you.”

Stoke stopped rocking and leaned forward in his chair. “We know all about that, boy. If you ain’t FBI, and you ain’t the IRS or some other government agent, just a normal guy, how’d you get here?”

“That’s something I am dying to find out.” The sooner he found out how he’d gotten in, the sooner he could use that information to get out.

“Ain’t we all?” Stoke glanced up at Jessa. “I don’t know what you think I’m gonna do about him.”

“I couldn’t just keep this kind of news from you. You’re the head of the town council. You’re the sheriff. They’ll all want to know about him, won’t they? Besides, he needs a place to stay,” Jessa piped up, her arms folded tight across her chest. Everything about her body language said that she wasn’t intimidated by this man, from the way she leaned casually against his door to the expression of boredom on her face. She feared him, though. Graf’s sense of smell was too good to miss that.

Stoke’s mouth canted sideways in the depths of his beard as he considered. Finally, he said, “You got that big house all to yourself out there, don’t you?”

She shook her head adamantly. “No, he can’t stay.”

“Put a crimp in your love life, does he?” Mrs. Stoke said blandly from the kitchen.

“Marjorie, you stay out of it, now,” the sheriff warned. Then, in the same warning tone, “Jessa, there are too many people in town and not enough room. What am I supposed to do with him?”

“Put him in over at the school,” she said with an exasperated sigh. The fear smell intensified, but so did her stubborn insistence that Graf wouldn’t stay with her. “Nobody’s using it!”

“Why, you know I’m using it for the jail. And school is neutral property, for the community. It ain’t a hotel.” Sheriff Stoke looked Graf up and down, like he was considering buying a cow. “Why don’t you take him on down to June’s Place and see if anyone there will take him? If you don’t want an extra hand around your place, there’s plenty who might.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something to do with him,” Marjorie put in dryly.

Apparently, Jessa had a reputation. Was that why she wanted him out of the house? So she wouldn’t sleep with him? Jessa, so uptight and moody, yet so unable to resist a roll in the hay with any guy who stumbled across her path. It was actually kind of hot. The reality was probably not that interesting. She probably just didn’t trust him, and didn’t want him to get in the way of her romance with a married man.

Jessa made a disgusted noise, but she didn’t do anything else to express her disapproval. “We better get heading over there, then.”

“I’m not quite done with your friend here,” Sheriff Stoke said, leaning back and putting his big, square hands on his knees. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Him just showing up looks a little fishy.”

“In my own defense, Sheriff, this whole town looks a little fishy,” Graf replied, annoyed. “It wasn’t my idea to get stuck here. And I will gladly leave at the first opportunity.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” Stoke agreed, but his expression was still hard, accusing. “I’m gonna have my eye on you, boy. Just keep your nose clean, and we won’t have any problems.”

“Squeaky, I assure you.” Graf stood, eager to be out of Elvis hell and away from these people who probably made a habit of needlessly mistrusting others.

“You have a good night, now,” Stoke said with a nod as Graf and Jessa stepped through the door and down the cinder-block steps. “And, Graf, keep your eye out. You got hit by It once, but until it draws blood, it’ll keep coming after you.”

“Well, that was a waste,” Graf muttered as they crossed the broken-down bridge.

“Not a waste, believe me.” Jessa sounded more worried than she had on the way over, definitely more frightened than she had in the trailer. “If we hadn’t come by, we would have heard about it.”

“What did he mean, about It drawing blood?” Was It some kind of mutant super-vampire? Graf didn’t know if he liked the idea of something else above him on the food chain.

Jessa’s mouth opened and her brow scrunched up. “Uh, well, that depends on who you ask. Some people in town have a theory about its movements and patterns.”

“You don’t agree with it?” How unlike her, to be contrary.

She shrugged. “I just have experience that runs counter to it.”

He waited a moment as they walked to see if she would continue explaining. When she didn’t, he snapped, “You wanna let me in on it?”

With a heavy sigh, she explained, “Except for the people It has killed, once it injures somebody it never goes back for them.”

“Could be a coincidence.” Graf kicked a rock and watched it bounce across the asphalt in the twilight. He frowned when he realized how entertaining that was to him.

“That’s what I’m leaning toward, myself. It does seem a little weird, though.” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

“No, tell me.” This was the kind of stuff he needed to learn so he could get out of town as fast as possible.

“Well.” She hesitated. “According to Mitch Moody, when It cornered him in his barn, it slashed his arm, then immediately backed off. Like it didn’t like the way he reacted or got bored with him.”

“Maybe he didn’t smell tasty,” Graf wondered aloud. “I mean, maybe there was something about the guy’s blood. Animals won’t eat prey that smells sick.”

“It doesn’t eat people,” Jessa snapped with disgust. “You don’t have to be so gruesome-minded.”

He changed the subject quickly. “What was up with the sheriff’s wife? Did you piss on her birthday cake or something?”

Jessa didn’t answer. She kept her head down as they walked, still hugging her arms around her chest.

“Well, let me feel free to form my own conclusions, then,” he went on. “You have a reputation.”

“What are you, from the sixties or something?” she snapped. “A ‘reputation'? Who am I, Rizzo?”

“I see I have struck a nerve.” He followed behind her, kicking stones down the road. “And, while dated, reputation is a perfectly good word. You have one. Either that, or you stole Marjorie’s boyfriend when the two of you were in high school.”

Jessa stopped walking and dropped her hands to her hips. Without facing him, she ground out, “Yes, everybody in town thinks I’m a whore. Are you happy?”

“I don’t care either way. But if I’m going to be shacking up with a woman, I would prefer her to be a loose woman.”

The minute she turned around, Graf knew his joke had not been interpreted in the spirit with which he had intended it. Jessa’s hand slashed out, her palm connecting with his cheek with a crack. It stung a little, but he made sure to grimace and rub his jaw. Little tricks like that made a vampire seem more human.

“Sorry,” he said, and he meant it this time. Being an asshole on purpose was one thing; being an asshole by accident was worse, somehow.

Jessa shook her head and turned back to the road, marching away from him with purpose.

“Look, that was uncalled-for, I admit.” He jogged to catch up with her, then slid smoothly in front, cutting off her forward progress. “We should at least try to get along until this whole mess is straightened out.”

“It’s never going to be straightened out, pal. You’re here for a while.” But she stuck her hand out, anyway, and shook the one Graf offered. “Just so you know, we’ll get along a lot better if you can refrain from calling me a whore.”

“I will file that away,” he promised.

“.and then it became a kind of co-op for everyone in town. A central meeting place.”

Graf nodded, though he hadn’t been listening for some time. As they walked through the dark, he’d asked one innocent question about their destination—June’s Place—and had received a history lesson that had lasted at least a mile. His feet ached, his throat was dry, and his ears were his worst enemy.

“So, there’s going to be someone there willing to take me in, then?” He slapped a mosquito off his neck.

Jessa shrugged. “Maybe. Despite what Sheriff Stoke said, you might be able to get one of the rooms at the old high school, if enough people argue on my side. There aren’t classes anymore, because of It.”

Scanning the road behind them, then ahead of them, Graf took some comfort in the shotgun tucked under Jessa’s arm. He didn’t have a clue what “It” was, but he didn’t feel the burning need to run into the thing again to try to figure it out. “So, people are afraid of It, enough that they won’t send their kids to school anymore, but they’ll come out to this June’s Place in the middle of the night?”

She shook her head. “It’s different, when it’s kids you’re talking about. People know they’re taking a chance coming out, but they’re more comfortable taking that chance when it’s just them and not their babies likely to get killed. Anyway, the people who’ve already been attacked don’t have anything to worry about, in their minds.”

“How many people has this thing killed, then?” he asked. “Like, has it ever killed a kid, for these fears to be warranted?”

“It has. One.” Jessa’s face got the same bitter, far-off look she’d had in the kitchen when he’d mentioned the stupid chore chart on the fridge the night before. It was the kind of expression that was visible even in the dark.

“Ah,” he said in understanding. “So, I take it that’s what happened to your family?”

“No. Someone else.” she said, and then a brightness in her voice signaled that their conversation would not be heading down that particular road. “Really, it hasn’t killed that many people. And the ones who’ve died either got in It’s way, or they picked a fight with It. Protecting livestock or their kids, you know?”

Well, It probably had nothing on Graf. And he’d be adding to his body count by the end of the night, if he played his cards right. As she launched into a forced-cheerful description of the local waitress who’d been killed by the monster and exactly what extracurricular activities she’d been involved in back when they’d been in high school, Graf gave Jessa a good onceover. She looked a lot better when she hadn’t just been running for her life. Her thin cotton tank top clung to her body from the humidity, and the light sheen of sweat that made her bare arms sparkle in the low light wafted her scent to him. He breathed it in, and his mouth watered. Her nipples stood out against the ribbed cotton of her shirt, and her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, swished against her neck. He imagined gripping her by that hair, winding the length of it around his fist as he jerked her head back.

That was where the fantasy ran into a snag. He didn’t know if he wanted to pull on that ponytail while he was eating her, or fucking her.

They came to the junction of the gravel road and blacktop and took a right. It wasn’t the road he’d come in on, Graf realized, and added it to his mental map. Not that it would be accurate in any way. If he was good with directions, he wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.

A few more minutes of walking in tense silence brought them within view of a long, low building with a flickering neon OPEN in the window. A weathered wooden sign in the empty parking lot proclaimed it JUNE’S PLACE.

“Is anybody here?” Graf asked, frowning at the lack of cars. Then, he recalled Jessa’s reluctance when he’d suggested driving there. “Oh, I get it. No gas …”

Jessa nodded. “No cars. Right. And I thought you should keep your fuel for when you needed to barter for something. If you brought that car here, you’d come out to find all the useful parts stripped off it.”

“Like, someone might try to siphon the gas out of it while I was inside?” He enjoyed her guilty expression for a moment before he said, “I saw the hose and the gas tank on the lawn.”

“Right. Well, I do what I have to.” The proud set of her chin didn’t match the still-remorseful look in her eyes.

They entered June’s Place through a small mud-room, its walls little more than the clapboard siding that covered the rest of the building. Jessa pushed open the door to the interior, and the thick, heavy smell of alcohol and something else—sweet and smoky and skunky—assaulted Graf in a cloud.

“Is that … pot?” he asked, covering his mouth with his sleeve.

“We can’t grow tobacco here,” she answered with a shrug. “People need something to smoke.”

Graf made a face. He liked a cigarette, and even a joint, every now and then, but he preferred his humans keep the oxygen in their blood free from pollutants. He looked around the room, trying to find one acceptable meal to replace Jessa when he finished her off, but everyone in June’s Place looked rough and leathery, and they all puffed on pipes or joints, big jars of clear alcohol in front of them. If he ate one of them, he’d be buzzed for a whole night.

He noticed the hungry way he was surveying all of the people in the bar. And they were all looking back at him, he realized with a shock.

“Who’s your friend, Jessa?” someone asked, and Graf turned toward the bar, where a slender woman with hair in a long, sandy-brown braid stood wiping a glass with a rag.

Jessa nudged him forward, and they walked to the bar, Jessa’s back stiff under the stares of the rest of the patrons.

“June,” she said with a smile as she hopped onto one of the bar stools. “This is Graf. He’s looking for a place to stay.”

“He picked a hell of a place,” June said, her ruddy face breaking into a smile. She reached across the bar to shake Graf’s hand with surprising firmness. Her smile faded as she looked back to Jessa. “Where’d he come from? “

“I ran into him out on the road last night.” She lowered her voice. “Out at the service station.”

“What were you doing there?” June had a way of talking without moving her mouth, and the words came out as though they were tied together with string. Graf liked that. It made everything she said seem tense and important.

Jessa shrugged casually, but leaned in so as not to be overheard. “I was running from It. Chased me all the way out there.”

June looked up from the bar with a plastered-on smile and nodded to the rest of her patrons. Then, she leaned back down. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

“She’s fine,” Graf said, slapping Jessa on the back. “Aren’t you? I got there just in time.”

The door opened, and a group of five guys stumbled in. Their entrance was loud and rowdy, but they didn’t draw the rapt attention of the patrons away from Graf and Jessa. They all held mason jars, half-full of clear liquid, and they could barely stand up straight. One of the guys was Derek.

“Oh, here we go,” June said with a sigh.

“What are they drinking?” Graf asked, his eyes watering from the drunken stink that nearly overpowered the smell of the marijuana smoke in the bar.

“Shine.” June jerked her thumb at the wall behind her. “It’s all we got. For a while, we tried prohibition, but with our situation … well, people deserve to numb the pain whatever way they can.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, June,” Graf said, slapping his hand down on the bar.

“They’re drunker than skunks,” Jessa said, making a face. “What the hell do they think they’re doing? Derek knows what happened last night. Why would he go out?”

“Probably celebrating,” June said, then, with a cautious glance at Jessa, went back to wiping down glasses. “You knew him and Becky were pregnant again, right?”

Graf stole a look at Jessa’s face. Apparently, she had not known, and the information wasn’t sitting well with her. She slid from her bar stool with a quiet “Excuse me.”